Occupation of Ford Factory

Studio MK27

Short description

The Occupation of Ford Factory is a social housing project for homeless people, which was developed in partnership with the city of São Paulo. Taking as a base a building that turned out to be historic, the first Ford factory in Brazil, the project develops through the ground floor and three other floors of the factory to work on the issue of social housing in the center of a large metropolis like São Paulo. The building consists of a main volume, the first one developed in the 1930s, and two volumes annexed to the building itself, in the same language, followed later.

Based on an idea of modularity reflected in the factory itself, the project seeks a housing module, which could be articulated with others in the creation of small internal villages. The module designed, a small cube measuring 6m x 6m with rounded edges, is intended to serve three different housing configurations proposed by the city hall. The modules are united by the wet volume, the bathroom, which can sometimes be divided, articulating two housing capsules, or can be individual to the module, and articulated only infrastructurally to the next module. It was thought that a set of 10 elaborate modules, 8 of which would be for housing, one for the common kitchen, and one for empty space, would constitute a first set of villages. Thus, per floor, three sets of villas are organized in space, like a citadel. In the volumes annexed to the main volume of the factory, the double height allows the overlapping of the modules, creating small buildings of three floors, interconnected by metallic paths and stairs.

The ground floor of the building is the main common space, designed to function as a public square. Screening takes place at the new entrance to the factory, on the back side, where the social situations of residents are recorded and they are allocated to a housing group. In the main building annex, the targeting of residents with domestic animals was considered. Therefore, an uncovered private square for these animals was included in the rear end of this volume.

On the outside of the building, the modules are addapted for social and leisure programs, such as a nursery, auditorium and market, in addition to the planned open uses, such as a vegetable garden, a sports court, a sensorial square, parking for collection wagons and waste treatment and separation station.

The project is made up of 127 capsule modules, each measuring 41 m². These modules can accommodate a total of 540 residents, individuals or families. The module was thought to be prefabricated using plywood. In this way, the module would come ready-made from the factory, or could even be produced in the building itself, temporarily transformed into a factory, and then allocated to one of the floors, with the help of the existing freight elevator.